Turkey's Constitutional Court on Thursday rejected main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) application for the annulment of several articles of the electoral alliance law on the grounds of election security.
The electoral alliance law, allowing political parties to form alliances for the first time in Turkish politics, was ratified by the Parliament on March 13. The court's decision was important as there are only 24 days left for the snap parliamentary and presidential elections in June.
However, some articles of the law also concerned the conduct and security of the elections. While in the past law enforcement could only be called to the polling centers by appointed officials, the new alliance bill allows citizens to call the authorities themselves to inform about possible disturbances.
This was among the articles brought before the top court by the CHP, in addition to articles allowing the relocation and aggregating of election polls, accepting unsealed ballots and envelopes as valid, registering voters residing in the same building to different electoral districts and rules of conduct to determine the poll board chairman.
Unsealed ballots and envelopes had been widely discussed in the aftermath of April 16, 2017 referendum on switching to a presidential system and other constitutional amendments, which were accepted by 51.4 of the votes. Ballots and envelopes that were not sealed by poll boards were deemed valid by the Supreme Election Board (YSK) during the vote, as it was done in smaller scales in previous elections, leading to fraud allegations by the opposition.
